SharePoint Search
Welcome! This is your place to suggest ideas or vote for ideas for improving the SharePoint Search experience.
How to submit a new idea
- Check if it's already been suggested. If it has, vote for it.
- If it's new, submit it in 50 words or less.
- Gather support!
- If your idea receives over 100 votes in 90 days, we will respond.
If not, we will close it.
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Implement Synonyms / Thesaurus in SharePoint Online
The ability to create a thesaurus of synonyms is invaluable, and exists in on-premises SharePoint but not SPO, this should be remedied.
Customers use the Search Thesaurus feature for many scenarios: to map acronyms to their expanded terms, to provide relevant results when companies merge or are acquired, to map corporate vocabularies to "plain English," and many more.
This would also make it possible to allow "Other Labels" including alternate languages in a Term Set to also be treated as synonyms in search results, which IIRC is the way it works on-premises but it also seems we've lost the ability…
239 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thanks for your feedback! We’re taking your suggestion into consideration.
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Make a search webpart for modern experience
Why is there no search webpart in the modern experience?
130 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thanks for your feedback! We’re reviewing your suggestion. Remember, the more votes a suggestion gets, the more likely it is that we’ll do it. You can see what’s happening with Office 365 on the Office 365 Roadmap.
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We need to be able to add custom refiners to the default modern hub site search experience.
We have several business needs which rely on easily searching and consuming information across our sites. While we appreciate the work so far that's gone into modern hub and site structures, we would like to be able to customize the default hub site search part. Particularly, we want to be able to add additional Refiners. We already have the required refiners in our site's defined search schema, why not allow us to add additional refiners to the search experience?
52 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thanks for your feedback! We’re reviewing your suggestion. Remember, the more votes a suggestion gets, the more likely it is that we’ll do it.
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External users access to use People Search in O365
We have B2B external users in SharePoint Online that would need to use our people search-based corporate directory. This has been working before but recently external users have been seeing only "nothing found" view.
42 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thanks for your feedback! We understand your concerns. There are several perspectives to take into consideration here and we’re reviewing these.
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Support the suffix matching in the search result
give the possibility by default to search result for suffix matching.
For example to receive result for "SharePoint" i could write "Share"
or "Point" and automatically the search will consider the search key as "Share" or "Point".35 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thank you for your feedback! We don’t support prefix search. There are upsides and downsides with doing suffix search by default. It’s a question of what’s best for most people. We’re taking your feedback into consideration.
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Partial word search by default (no requirement for wildcard)
I worked with Microsoft support to create a new search scope that included the wildcard for every entry at the top level site. We applied this template as the default and it works when searching at the top level site. However, it does not apply when searching within a Document library that resides at the same level as the parent. Ultimately, we do not want to require a wildcard for every partial search. If someone wants to find instructions in our library for GoToMeeting they should be able to find it by simply entering Goto.
33 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thank you for your feedback! There are upsides and downsides with doing partial word search by default. It’s a question of what’s best for most people. We’re taking your feedback into consideration.
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"query rule"
Please add the SharePoint On-Premises feature to SharePoint Online to create Query Rules with the Query Condition: "Query matches this regular expression". This would enable us to target query rules based on our organisations reference format.
25 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thanks for your feedback! We’re reviewing your suggestion. Remember, the more votes a suggestion gets, the more likely it is that we’ll do it. You can see what’s happening with Office 365 on the Office 365 Roadmap.
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Modern Sharepoint search page to use Search settings page result URL from site collection
Modern Sharepoint search page to use default Search settings page result URL from site collection so that results can go to enterpise search - search center page /search
20 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thank you for your answer! The default behavior when you search from a site, is that you get results from that site. You can change the scope to be all of SharePoint by clicking the SharePoint link that’s directly above the search box on the search results page. After changing the scope you’ll also see results from your on-premises content that has been pushed to the Office 365 index.
We’re thinking about whether this default behavior should be different, and are interested in hearing what people think about this. -
Option to open document either by web browser or local application when searching.
Option to open document either by web browser or local application when searching.
16 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thank you, then we understand. We’re taking your idea into consideration.
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SharePoint Online search connector to Azure Data Lake
This idea is to create a SharePoint Online search connector to Azure Data Lake. This should be similar to the file share connector we have in hybrid search, but connect directly from the SharePoint Online search engine to Azure Data Lake. This will allow us to include files stored in Azure Data Lake in the enterprise search solution.
15 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thanks for your feedback! We’re reviewing your idea. The more votes a suggestion gets, the more likely it is that we’ll do it
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Create a Search Score explain tool
Providing a tool that helps break down the search result score that an individual search result has received would help remove the mystery around SharePoint search. This could then be used to understand why results aren't returning in an expected order and tune metadata, settings, etc appropriately.
13 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thanks for your feedback! We understand what you’d like to achieve and we’re revieweing your suggestion. The more votes a suggestion gets, the more likely it is that we’ll do it.
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Increase hit highlighted summary length / make configurable
Currently, the HitHighlightedSummary value is shows hits from the first 10,000 characters of a document. When the hits are not included in the summary, it pulls a summary from a seemingly random part of the document.
This limit seems arbitrarily low. Many of our documents hit the limit after the first 5 pages, which often include a lot of boilerplate. It's caused a lot of confusion for our users and during usability testing, many expressed a lack of confidence in the search results ("why am I getting this result, is it broken?").
This limit should be increased, and preferably configurable…
13 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thanks for your feedback! We understand your concerns. There are several perspectives to take into consideration here and we’re reviewing these.
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Use Display Templates when rendering results on SharePoint Home
At the top of the SharePoint Home page (_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx) is a search box. The items shown as a result of using that search box do not respect any configured Display Templates.
11 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thanks for your feedback! We’re reviewing your suggestion. Remember, the more votes a suggestion gets, the more likely it is that we’ll do it.
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Show (also) email attachments in SharePoint people search (like in Delve)
Our colleagues are used to work with SharePoint Search and do not want to use antother app for this purpose. Unfortunately people search in SharePoint doesn't bring up any Email attachments but only files stored in SharePoint or shared within OneDrive. I really hope that this is going to be changed soon...
10 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thanks for your feedback! We’re reviewing your suggestion. Remember, the more votes a suggestion gets, the more likely it is that we’ll do it.
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Remove pagination in search results
why limit search results and break them down into pages? You cannot quickly access pages with a higher number, nor do you know how many search results there are - giving you no indication whatsoever of the amount of pages I might have to trawl through.
Pagination in people search results is especially frustrating.
9 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thanks for your feedback! We understand your concern and are reviewing your suggestion. Remember, the more votes a suggestion gets, the more likely it is that we’ll do it.
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Customizing new search boxes
I have some comments on search boxes on the left side of the screen viewed after clicking "SharePoint" from app launcher.
I can find with ease on which sites searched items are shown, but I can't customize the "items on some specified sites” and so on just like I used to do for classic search boxes.
I am able to customize classic search boxes, but I have a difficulty in looking for the items and I can't find the sites for items.
I request that I am able to make a search of items I look for by narrowing them…8 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thanks for your feedback! We’re reviewing your suggestion.
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.DWG
Allow to add custom file extension type like .DWG etc. so that search results could be able to link to actual file like .pdf etc.
6 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thanks for your feedback! We’re reviewing your suggestion. Remember, the more votes a suggestion gets, the more likely it is that we’ll do it.
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Show search results for pages under Websites (or pages) not under files in Modern SharePoint Search
When users search for pages in modern search (via SharePoint Home or on Communication/Team Site) they will find pages under files. Most users don't know that SharePoint pages are actually .aspx files. Files for them are Office documents, PDFs or pictures, but NOT pages.
Please make it easier for users to distinguish those content types. A possible solution could be to include pages in the websites results (for users sites are sites, not site collections and pages). You could als provide a filter under websites results for site collections and pages.
6 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thank you for your feedback and suggestion! We’re aware that presenting page results under Files is challenging, and are considering other solutions. However we can’t share a timeline on this now.
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show preview of image on sharepoint search result
Show preview of image file in sharepoint search result, when image location is a document library
4 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thanks for your feedback! We’re reviewing your suggestion.
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Consolidate to one effective search function
There are at least three search functions in SharePoint online today and none of them are very good and turning up results that are usable. Users want a single search function accessible everyone within Office 365 that turns up accurate results like a google search would. The current search experiences are not friendly by return a bunch of garbage results that do not apply to what is needed.
For example: I want to search "Employee Change Form" and get the employee change form - not every single employee change form that has ever been filled out listed by last modified…
2 votesthinking about it ·AdminSharePoint UserVoice Admin (SharePoint UserVoice Admin, Microsoft SharePoint) responded
Thank you for your feedback! Consolidating search is a good idea and is the direction we want to move in. We hope to provide good news soon.
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